Leno on Hydrogen Fueling Our Future: Jay's Green Garage

When I hear people blaming the automobile for global warming, I have to chuckle. At the turn of the previous century, the car was seen as a savior. Back then, horses were the primary means of motive power, pulling heavy carts and carrying people. Sadly, they would drop dead in the streets from sheer exhaustion or abuse. And mounds of manure befouled Chicago, New York and other big cities, spreading nasty diseases like dysentery. Suddenly, the automobile came along and people said, "Oh look, there's just a little blue smoke! How nice." Soon, horses were no longer misused as draft animals and the amount of droppings lying around was significantly reduced. Everyone was happy.

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Today, the automobile is under attack from people who believe that it's the major cause of all our environmental woes. But it's not the car. It's the fuel. The residual gases, mainly CO2, produced from burning fossil fuel in internal-combustion engines are to blame. Fortunately, many modern cars don't have to run on fossil fuels.

While most automakers are experimenting with potential solutions, such as hybrids and electric cars, that would drastically change the automotive landscape, BMW is pursuing a simpler solution: Use hydrogen to power a good old internal-combustion engine.

Think about it. Modern IC engines run smoothly, they're powerful and, if they're not 100 percent dependable, they're darn close to it. So why push this technology to the side and start over again with, say, a hybrid or electric car?

I recently spent 10 days driving around in BMW's Hydrogen 7, a standard 7 Series sedan equipped with a 6.0-liter V12 engine that's been modified to run on either gasoline or hydrogen. Unlike a fuel cell vehicle that converts H2 to electricity, the 7 actually burns it just like gasoline. The hydrogen is stored as a supercooled liquid in an insulated tank located behind the rear passenger seats. (The tank is so well-insulated that if you put a scalding cup of coffee in there in mid-September, it would still burn your lips at Thanksgiving dinner!) All that insulation keeps most of the hydrogen at a chilly minus 423 F. But a small amount of H2 is constantly "boiling off," or vaporizing. When the car is not running, the excess gas is mixed with oxygen and vented into the atmosphere. When the car is running, that excess vapor is forced into the vehicle's intake manifold, where it's mixed with air and injected into the engine's cylinders to be burned.

Re-engineering the stock 7 Series engine to handle the combustion characteristics of hydrogen, which burns faster, hotter and more aggressively than gasoline, didn't require extraordinary retrofitting. In addition to a new fuel injection system, the automaker designed special pistons with cooling channels to withstand high temperatures. It also modified the valve seats to deal with the fact that hydrogen gas, unlike gasoline, doesn't contain carbon, which typically helps to lubricate the valves. The Bimmer also senses when it's under hydrogen power and modifies ignition and valve timing. In gas mode, everything returns to normal. So if you handed the keys to someone who had no car knowledge, they'd have no idea they were driving something unique. Now, that's truly a flex-fuel application.

One of the main benefits of using hydrogen is easy to explain. A few years ago, I was asked to give an automotive talk at Paramount Studios. First, I drove a hydrogen-powered car onto the stage, placed an empty glass under the tailpipe and let the car idle. As I spoke, the glass filled with water, the byproduct of burning this fuel. When I finished, I picked up the glass and drank the liquid. It wasn't the best-tasting water, but there was nothing wrong with it. And that's the point: What came out of the car was harmless.

Of course, there are disadvantages to hydrogen. For one thing, there's that venting issue. If the car is a daily rider, there's no problem. But if you fill it with hydrogen and go away for a couple of weeks, your tank will probably be empty upon your return. Availability is also an issue. The infrastructure just isn't there to support a mass rollout right now. Where would the cars refuel? BMW sent people to my garage to fill the tank for me.

We're at the same crossroads today as in 1907: What fuel should we go with? One hundred years ago, there was steam, gasoline, diesel, electricity and even ethanol. The only fuel we didn't have was hydrogen. Obviously, gasoline won out.

These days, steam is not taken seriously as a power source, gasoline is in question, diesel and ethanol are making a comeback, electric power is being considered and now we have hydrogen in the mix. Which fuel will emerge victorious? Probably the one that comes with a mass marketing plan, and gets to the people fastest and cheapest.